darwinpolice:shiat, have you ever been to East Cleveland? I don't stop at red lights there, either.

GM had the Detroit Police come out and give us a safety briefing, since we have some facilities in Detroit. The focus was on going in late at night or early in the morning. The cop told everyone "Unless you want to get car jacked, rolling stops only in these areas." One engineer asked "Well what if we get pulled over, can we tell the officer you told us not to stop." The cop's response was "If someone tries to pull you over, keep going, because we don't go into those areas at night."

/we also a young female engineer who was outraged over the unofficial company policy to only send male engineers to those facilities during certain hours. If you have to get an engineer into the plant for some reason, call a guy.//the older female engineers took her aside and explained that while there is gender equality, there is also gang rape

Eatin' Queer Fetuses for Jesus:redmid17: Eatin' Queer Fetuses for Jesus: Good to know we have someone here on Fark who was in the room and witnessed this collusion. Why don't you speak up next time and tell them how wrong it is?

Still doesn't change the fact that shortening the yellow lights only punishes those assholes who speed up when they see one, which is the opposite of what you are supposed to do. A lot of people *talk* about safety being the important issue, then out of the other side of their mouth champion the practice of speeding up to "beat" a yellow light.

Next time it comes up for a vote, you can bet I will. Also why do you think cities and counties install these lights? It's for the revenue, not the safety. There's a reason why they justify the cost and expensive contract with revenue projections....

Instead of being an obtuse moron, realize that these particular contraptions are extremely controversial, at best, for a reason. Given that many cities have dumped cash at ATS to get out of the shiatty contracts, you're pretty easily on the wrong side of this one.

Given that nobody has posted a link proving the traffic camera companies were reprogramming traffic light timing, I'm pretty sure I'm still on the right side of the argument I was participating in. Not sure what you were reading.

You seem to be on the side of the red light camera enforcement, which says enough about you in the first place. There is a direct correlation between the intersections chose by the ticketing companies and the intersections with the shortened yellows. At best, the municipalities and the companies are working together to shorten lights and maximize revenue. At worst, the companies are dictating how long the lights should be to generate revenue.

These lights are farking jokes.

Anderson added Friday that if a city employee in the future had to travel to Arizona to get training or certification related to the traffic enforcement camera operations, he likely would approve such a trip.

"That, I would think, is not discretionary," Anderson said, because "we're talking about very important revenue streams for the city" that are a function of an existing contract.

But in case you were really looking for evidence that ATS and related companies were influencing the length of the yellow light:Some contracts that municipalities have signed with camera vendors include provisions that inhibit local authorities from determining and setting their own appropriate yellow light timing. For example, the city of Bell Gardens, California signed a contract with Redflex in 2008 that would penalize the city if it chooses to alter yellow light timing at intersections where cameras are installed. Contract language gives Redflex the option to penalize the city by nullifying the cost-neutral protections in the contract if it "fails to maintain the minimum yellow light change interval as established by the Institute of Transportation Engineers [ITE]." The cities of Citrus Heights, Hawthorne and Corona, California have similarly structured contracts with Redflex. In 2001, a lawsuit against San Diego'scamera program revealed documents showing that the vendor prioritized intersections with short yellow signal timing, high traffic volume, and downhill approaches-all factors that would tend to increase citation volume and thus revenue-for camera placement. The intersections where cameras were placed were not necessarily the intersections with the largest number of accidents.

w00ty: right. just like how a cop can rear end cars at 100 mph with their light bars off.

Yeah a cop pulled out at night with no lights ( no headlights etc) and got t boned by our network admin. cop swore his lights were on as well as blue lights responding. They gave him a ticket and threatened to jail him. They claimed they had witnesses etc.Network admin took his lumps that night and took it to court. Cops tried to rough him up and at trial tacked on more charges and brought the witnesses. Network admin let them all testify and then pulled out his laptop with the dashcam video from his car as well as from the police car. Video the PD claimed didn't existed because the car didn't have an active camera.He got enough out of them to buy a nice new car. The judge dismissed the case and when he left was screaming at everyone.

/don't lie about your mistakes//don't do it to someone who knows more about computers than you///don't do it to the brother of the county it dept who can find out the truth and crucify you with it

A local news investigation has found that the city of Dallas, Texas depends upon short yellow timing to maximize red light camera profit. Of the ten cameras that issue the greatest number of tickets in the city, seven are located at intersections where the yellow duration is shorter than the bare minimum recommended by the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), KDFW-TV found.

The city's second highest revenue producing camera, for example, is located at the intersection of Greenville Avenue and Mockingbird Lane. It issued 9407 tickets worth $705,525 between January 1 and August 31, 2007. At the intersections on Greenville Avenue leadding up to the camera intersection, however, yellows are at least 3.5 or 4.0 seconds in duration, but the ticket producing intersection's yellow stands at just 3.15 seconds. The yellow is .35 seconds shorter than TxDOT's recommended bare minimum.

"For 30 miles per hour, if your yellow time was less than three and a half, you would not be giving that driver enough time to react and brake and stop prior to getting to the intersection," TxDOT Dallas District office transportation engineer supervisor Chris Blain told KDFW.

A small change in signal timing can have a great effect on the number of tickets issued. About four out of every five red light camera citations are issued before even a second has elapsed after the light changed to red, according to a report by the California State Auditor. This suggests that most citations are issued to those surprised by a quick-changing signal light. Confidential documents obtained in a 2001 court trial proved that the city of San Diego, California and its red light camera vendor, now ACS, only installed red light cameras at intersections with high volumes and "Amber (yellow) phase less than 4 seconds."

Dallas likewise installed the cameras at locations with existing short yellow times. A total of twenty-one camera intersections in Dallas have yellow times below TxDOT's bare minimum recommended amount. The Texas Transportation Institute study also found that shorter yellows generate a 110 percent jump in the number of tickets, but at the cost of safety. Increasing the yellow one second above the recommended minimum cut crashes by 40 percent.

Since the Dallas intersection ticketing program launched last December, it has issued $13.5 million worth of automated citations from sixty camera locations. Beginning in September, however, Texas cities must split camera ticket profit with the state. To make up for lost revenue, Dallas plans to install forty more cameras. View KDFW's signal timing chart, a 44k PDF file.

ha-ha-guy:Dman33: My dad used to work nights at a plant in Hamtramck and would take Cass in to the plant. He said there are multiple instances were he genuinely feared for his life on his way to/from work. I always wondered why he drove large late-70s tanks for his 'work car'.

Hamtramck was definitely the worst of all the plants out there. Even Flint and Saginaw weren't as bad. We kept a rusted out compact up at the technical center. If you had to go to Hamtramck after hours you left your car at the tech center and went in with the crap car and a big ugly XXL jacket on to hide any nice clothes you might be wearing. That car looked like crap but the power train was kept in pristine condition, because you absolutely did not want that car dying on you.

/it's pointless to carry a weapon//I've been mugged twice, each time it was at least four people with multiple guns visible on their persons, hauling out my CCW would have just ensured I lost my wallet and ended up with some bullet holes in me

Partially related: I worked with a guy that got mugged in Flint. He didn't have any money on him so the loss of his wallet was more of an inconvenience. What really hurt was that they took his custom HK USP .40 he was carrying worth about $1k.

Concealed weapons are surprisingly ineffective against weapons that are already in your face.

pedrop357:vpb: Glancing Blow: Simplistic solution: arrest them in the USPS attack vehicles, impound the trucks, and make the USPS come and get them. After five or six times the red-light running will cease. Repeat as necessary.